162 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 



is attested by the Corean signs for ts, dz, which are combinations of 

 k and s. Such then is the meagre Etruscan syllabary, and such its 

 derivation. I might, perhaps, have gained more attention and credit 

 for its decipherment, had I, as might easily be done, left the distant 

 Aztec out of sight. This, however, would have been to saciifice, to 

 a dogmatic dictum of "antecedent improbability," common gratitude, 

 love of truth, and really scientific principle. Everything is anteced- 

 ently improbable in the region of the unsolved, otherwise the un- 

 solved would not exist. 



To the names of those already mentioned who have materially 

 aided me in the work of decipherment, I should add my acknowledg- 

 ments to W. Harry Rylands, Esq., Secretary of the Society of 

 Biblical Archaeology ; M. Leon de Rosny, President of the Institution 

 Ethnographique of Paris ; W. H. Vander Smissen, Esq., Librarian 

 of the University of Toronto ; Hyde Clarke, Esq., Vice-President of 

 the Anthropological Institute ; the Rev. George Coull, A.M. ; my 

 colleague, the Rev. Professor Coussirat ; and last, but not least, to 

 J. C. Robertson, Esq , B.A., Classical Fellow in University College, 

 Toronto, for his kind care in revising the proof-sheets of this paper. 



THE ETRUSCAN SEPULCHRAL INSCRIPTIONS. 

 The Rev. Isaac Taylor and other Etruscologists, while failing to 

 translate these inscriptions, have made some good guesses. Such are 

 their suppositions that the characters they have read ISA denote a 

 wife, those read SEC, a daughter, and those read AL, a child. If, 

 according to their own method, they had read SA, EC, and NAL, 

 they would have been more correct. The first is nare or anre, wife ; 

 the second necM, now nesca, daughter ; and the third karasa, or in 

 modei^n Basque, sortze, natus.^'' Other terms of relationship are uta 

 and habe father, and uga or uga anre mother or lady mother, some- 



37 It has been objected that karasa and sortze are difficult to reconcile. That NAL, karasa 

 means " uatus/' several bilinguals attest. The Basque "natus" is sortze. The only difficulty 

 in the word is the replacement of ka by so after an interval of over a thousand years m the 

 history of the language. See Van Eys, Diotionnaire Basque-Francais, Introduction, p. XLIII. 

 Tableau des permutations des consonnes dans les mots basques de differents dialectes. 

 K = S, Z, Ch. Karamitcha = zaramika ; kirten = zirtoin; kiskaldu = chichkaldu ; gale = zale ; 

 gapar = zapar ; itogin = itozin. For change of vowel see in the same dictionary, khurruka, 

 khurulla derived from karraka ; garratz — kirats, kharax ; galde = galdo ; raarruskatu = mur- 

 ruskatu ; salhutzea = zaulitzea ; chokon = zokun; elkar ^ elkor ; etzin =: etzan ; ala, halatan 

 = hola, holatau. The Japanese equivalent of the Basque sortze is harautu. One class of 

 Japanese verbs derived from nouns is formed by adding mu to the noun ; thus from hara, belly 

 comes hara-mu to be with child. In the same way but with a different verb-former tu, tzen. 



